1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a computer method and apparatus for unfreezing an apparently frozen application program being executed under control of a multitasking operating system. More particularly, the invention relates to a computer method and apparatus for regaining access to an application program which has become unresponsive to user inputs such as from the keyboard and/or the mouse of the computer system executing the application program.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are instances when an application program running under the WINDOWS* 95 or WINDOWS.RTM. NT operating systems ceases to be responsive to user inputs such as from the keyboard and/or the mouse of a computer system. When this occurs, the application program is called frozen. Presently one of the few things that a user can do when this occurs is to call the "Close Program" function of the operating system by depressing the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys on the keyboard. This action will cause the operating system to display the "Close Program" dialog box. The displayed dialog box will include a list of all programs running under the operating system and will indicate whether any of the programs so listed are unresponsive.
If another of the programs is marked unresponsive, where that other program is not the apparently frozen application program of main interest on which the user experienced the problem, the user can select the unresponsive other program and then select "End Task" which will close that other program. Of course by doing such any data not previously saved from within that unresponsive other application program may be lost. The user can then close the Close Program dialog box thereby closing the Close Program function and then can ascertain whether or not the "End Task" operation performed on the other, not-responding program has caused the apparently frozen application of main interest to now become unfrozen, that is, to become responsive to user inputs such as from the keyboard and the mouse.
If the only the program marked unresponsive is the apparently frozen application program of main interest on which the user experienced the problem, the user can only select this application program and then select "End Task" which will close that program. Of course by doing so, any data not previously saved from within that apparently frozen and unresponsive program may be lost.
There are occasions where the "Close Program" dialog box will not list any programs as being unresponsive after a user has experienced an application program becoming unresponsive to user inputs such as from the keyboard and/or mouse. Under this situation, the user can still select that application program and then select "End Task" which will close that program. Of course by doing such any data not previously saved in that program will be lost.